When a madman calls out your name you have two choices – pretend you didn’t hear him and hide, or try to reason; explain he had you confused with someone else, he didn’t understand what you were really trying to say and how you were really his best friend.

Australian political leaders, who cling to what seems to be their genetically programmed fear of abandonment, generally opt for the second choice. Yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir.

But as anyone who has tried to reason with a person who has become detached from reality knows, the more you say, the worse it gets.

And so, it has transpired.

The prime minister has for weeks tiptoed around Trump’s unhinged and demonstrably false statements about Australia’s lack of support for the US.

Never before has the person who occupied the Oval Office – which once carried the moniker “leader of the free world” – uttered such incendiary remarks, unedited on social media and declaimed without fear of contradiction in front of microphones.

Even as other world leaders called out the madness of a war without clear objectives, the Australian prime minister was cautious, even mealy-mouthed. It’s an old lesson of political........

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